“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams

Europe

The Wall Street Journal calls the economic implosion now taking place in Europe “a crisis of the welfare state.” For America, this is a time for decision and definition. Not a time for splitting the baby. Are we going to continue in the direction of materialism and bureaucracy and share the fate of Europe? Or will we make the tough decisions to get back on the path of prosperity, the path of faith and individual freedom?

Europe is really starting to get it. After decades of running around with their heads up…well, with their heads full of liberal rubbish, they are finally starting to face the fact that liberalism is nothing but a bunch of feel-good ideas that just don’t work in the real world. Case in point is multiculturalism, or the idea that a people, a society can hang onto radically different beliefs and values and still be “on the same team.” British Prime Minister David Cameron is the latest European leader to get it.

Thomas Paine would have a heart attack if he saw today what America has turned into. A huge government, overspending to buy votes, astronomical deficits, and entrenched incumbents that often couldn’t care less when it comes to the will of the people. Without a change of culture, the sound economy that comes with balancing the budget is a pipe dream. It will never happened – and America is at risk.

In a press release today, the Family Research Council reported that the European Court of Human Rights has decided that there is not a “right to abortion.” The case involved Ireland’s abortion laws and attempts by some in Europe to force abortion on that country in contravention to its laws.

Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution recently interviewed Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Daniel Hannan. Hannan is a British conservative who has ripped his own government’s Leftist policies and in the past two years has revealed himself to be a great friend of the United States. He better understands and appreciates what makes America unique and exceptional better than many Americans. He also understands the perils of trying to make the United States like less free nations.

Ponzi schemes rely on people falling for promises that are literally too good to be true — but the outcomes are never really in doubt for the perpetrators of these scams, are they? This is the modus operandi of governments all over the world in our current era of Keynesian excess — an era in which new taxes, fees and fines must be continually created and levied in order to pay for promises made in previous years.